“Our government bears responsibility for the loss of life at the Kenyan mall.”

“Does al Shabab Pose a Threat on American Soil?” So read a headline in the New York Times’ blog, Room for Debate. Despite its name, Room for Debate rarely shows any true differences of opinion on whatever issue of the day is considered significant to the Times’ editors. None of the supposed debaters on this topic actually addressed the central issue of al-Shabaab’s existence and what it says about the United States behavior around the world. A better question would be why the United States turned Somalia into a ruin and why does it keep killing people there.

Sometimes we get the opportunity to see violence up close as in the recent al-Shabaab attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya. But in the absence of good reporting, scenes of carnage tell us nothing. Thanks to liar presidents and their partners in the corporate media, Americans know nothing about Kenya or its role as American partner in keeping Somalia in a constant state of war.

Up until a month ago, no one in the Bush administration showed the least bit of interest in the incidents of piracy off the coast of Somalia. Now that's all changed and there's talk of sending in the Navy to patrol the waters off the Horn of Africa and clean up the pirates hideouts. Why the sudden about-face? Could it have something to do with the fact that the Ethiopian army is planning to withdrawal all of its troops from Mogadishu by the end of the year, thus, ending the failed two year US-backed occupation of Somalia?

The United States has lost the ground war in Somalia, but that doesn't mean its geopolitical objectives have changed one iota. The US intends to stay in the region for years to come and use its naval power to control the critical shipping lanes from the Gulf of Aden. The growing strength of the Somali national resistance is a set-back, but it doesn't change the basic game-plan. The pirates are actually a blessing in disguise. They provide an excuse for the administration to beef up it's military presence and put down roots. Every crisis is an opportunity.

The New York Times paints a pretty picture of George W. Bush's bosom pals in Ethiopia, in an important story that once again gives the howling lie to the Bushists' pretensions of advancing freedom and democracy in their world-encircling Terror War.

Of course, the story itself, by Jeffrey Gettleman, is marred by the usual uncritical acceptance of Administration spin on its key role in aiding the Ethiopian dictatorship's aggression in Somalia, and ignores entirely the American airstrikes during the invasion that killed scores of civilians (and are still going on in the Somali hinterland). This is not surprising, given that Gettleman's last big piece from the region was a truly odious bit of propaganda hackwork that essentially painted the victims of the aggression as greedy, worthless, anarchic trash who got what was coming to them. (See "The Lies of the Times: NYT Pushes Bush Line on Somalia.")

Evidently it is now a capital crime, worthy of instant death by special ops or air raid or drone-fired missile, for any Muslim of any nationality to visit or take part in an Islamic regime which the U.S. government dislikes.

How many people did American forces actually kill when they attacked refugees fleeing from the U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia last January? We know from reports by Oxfam, the Guardian, the Associated Press and Reuters that dozens of innocent civilians were slaughtered near the Kenyan border, including villagers and nomadic tribesmen hit by American gunships seeking to kill alleged al Qaeda operatives who may or may not have been among the refugees. But a new story in Esquire magazine -- detailing the creation of America's most recent military satrapy, the Africa Command -- provides disturbing indications that the post-invasion killing by American operatives in Somalia was far more extensive -- and deliberate -- than previously known. [Extensive background on the war in Somalia can be found here.]

How bad is the situation in Somalia, the third target of George W. Bush's "Terror War" take-downs? It's "worse than Darfur," says the UN's humanitarian chief, John Holmes.

Holmes, a former top British diplomat, told the Telegraph that "In terms of the numbers of people displaced, and our access to them, Somalia is a worse crisis than Darfur or Chad or anywhere else this year."

Yesterday we wrote of the plight of a U.S. citizen who had fled the fighting during the Bush-backed invasion of Somalia only to find himself "renditioned" into the sinister prisons of the Ethiopian invaders – despite the fact that U.S. officials declared that there were no charges against him. (See the second half of that post.)

Now The Independent reports that Amir Meshal – the 24-year-old New Jersey man renditioned by U.S. officials because he refused to confess to being an al Qaeda agent – is not alone in being subjected to the lawless procedure so beloved by the defenders of civilization. (For an early example of this, which also involved Somalia, see Render Unto Caesar.)

As usual, it takes a few days for the truth to emerge, not that the corporate media here in America notices.

Instead of killing Fazul Abdullah Moham-med, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Abu Taha al-Sudani, supposedly "al-Qaeda" operatives responsible for the 1998 US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the Pentagon killed "herdsmen ... gathered with their animals around large fires at night to ward off mosquitoes" in Somalia, according to the Independent.

"Oxfam yesterday confirmed at least 70 nomads in the Afmadow district near the border with Kenya had been killed. The nomads were bombed at night and during the day while searching for water sources. Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Kenya has acknowledged that the onslaught on Islamist fighters failed to kill any of the three prime targets," described as "backfir[ing] spectacularly" by the British newspaper.

US air strikes against targets in the south of Somalia have claimed a substantial number of civilian lives. The bombing campaign, begun Sunday night and continued on Monday, mark a major escalation in the Bush administration's lawless use of violence to achieve Washington's strategic aims under the auspices of its "global war on terrorism."

The attacks mark the first direct US military intervention in Somalia since 1994, when President Clinton ordered US troops withdrawn following the "Blackhawk Down" episode that led to the deaths of 18 Army commandos during street fighting in Mogadishu. The recent attacks, part of an intensified attempt to establish American hegemony over the entire Horn of Africa, have heightened the threat that the conflict in Somalia will ignite a regional war with unforeseeable consequences.

It is simply amazing how many times the transparently bogus "al-Qaeda" has been used as an excuse to unleash violence against largely innocent Muslims and yet so few people here in America catch on, preferring to believe the corporate media fed illusion, now hammered firmly into place and accepted as political reality.

Earlier today, we learned a "U.S. Air Force gunship has conducted a strike against suspected members of al Qaeda in Somalia," CBS reports straight from a Pentagon script. "The targets included the senior al Qaeda leader in East Africa and an al Qaeda operative wanted for his involvement in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa," apparently reason enough to kill around 200 people. "The gunship flew from its base in Dijibouti down to the southern tip of Somalia... where the al Qaeda operatives had fled after being chased out of the capital of Mogadishu by Ethiopian troops backed by the United States."

The recent Ethiopian invasion of Somalia is a direct product of the US-British "war on terror". It threatens to further destabilise a region which has repeatedly been torn apart by war and famine.

Ethiopia's rulers ordered the war on behalf of George Bush in order to prosecute their own regional interests, to deflect Western criticism of their own repressive regime, and to collect the pay off from being a top US ally in a strategically crucial area. Somalia is just across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

But the rejoicing in Ethiopia and the US at the defeat of the Islamic militias in Somalia may prove short-lived.

On June 5, militia aligned with the Islamic Courts Uniοn (ICU) declared victory in their struggle to control Mogadishu, capital of the east African country of Somalia. The militia had routed the grossly misnamed Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism (ARPCT) — a coalition of US-backed warlords who had put a halt to their near-ceaseless internecine fighting in a failed effort to stop the ICU's growing control of the capital.

Fierce fighting broke out between the ARPCT and the ICU in March, leaving hundreds of people dead. In the week following the ARPCT's defeat in Mogadishu, the last ARPCT stronghold in the country's south, the town of Jowhar, fell with little resistance to the ICU.